Plastic bag ban: Coming soon to your city?

In my opinion, banning plastic bags can’t happen fast enough. I’ve noticed that in developing countries, many people will reuse their bags until they are so torn up they can’t hold anything, but once they fall apart there is no where to dispose of them. Likewise, in North America, people will bag a single small item in a plastic bag, then toss the bag once home with little regard of what happens to it then. Banning plastic bags and letting people take responsibility for transporting their items is a necessity if we are going to make any effort to preserve the planet for future generations.

El Calafate, Argentina bans plastic shopping bags but still has plastic bags for the fruits and veggies to be weighed and tagged in. It’s a different plastic, I suppose, and the bags you see trapped in the bushes and at the bird sanctuary are pre-ban grocery bags.

There’s a small but growing movement afoot to bring cloth bags to the supermarket in Santiago, Chile, but it seems it will be an eternity before it catches on.

The Whole Foods in Portland, ME, stopped offering plastic bags last year…could be their nationwide policy, I’m not sure.

I don’t foresee it happening anytime soon in Bolivia, although those who dress indigenously already have a built-in carrier fashioned by tying a blanket around their chest, so who knows…

I’m a big fan of cutting down on the plastic bag wastage, and maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here (since it’s unlikely these bans will ever be perfectly effective) but a silly part of me always wonders: if plastic bags go away entirely, what do I wrap my shampoo bottle in, in case it explodes in my suitcase? Or what do I do about picking up after my dog? Are there biodegradable garbage bags in the works so we can still gather up and put out the trash that we can’t a) compost or b) recycle?

Anyway, I’m sure solutions to all these things will be found as necessity demands it.

you know what gets me, living in these countries and especially Guatemala, the amazing huge bags that you can get at the local market which can be taken with you and are actually fashionable are not being used for these reasons.
instead, Guatemala is without a doubt one of the most plastic consuming nations i’ve ever seen. I mean, they give you a freakin’ plastic bag to put your plastic bagged juice. and when i say, i don’t need a bag, they look at me as though I’m the weird one!!!!!!!
The Travel Expert(a) – Living and Traveling Central America

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Melanie: that’s interesting, I haven’t heard about SA’s ban for May 4, that is great! I’m in Melbourne…I do read the debates about banning or at least charging for plastic bag usage – unbelievably, people are against it, saying things like they won’t be able to afford the canvas bags or some other lame excuse.

Although lots of people do use canvas bags, there are still a lot who use plastic bags (I will admit, I sometimes have to use them when I’m caught out). But I wouldn’t mind paying a penalty for it – would be more incentive to not be caught out! And they could use that money for some green initiatives.

The only reason I’ve ever needed plastic bags was if I had run out of garbage bags at home.

Aside from that the main thing plastic bags are handy for is preventing water damage or protecting something you need preserved…which you can use zip-locking bags for. I always use those when hitting the road.

Maybe a solution would be to charge for grocery bags? Outlawing them seems a little extreme, but charging to discourage their use is a good option in my opinion. But you can buy plastic bags off the shelf too….

Ending the use of plastic bags completly would be fantastic!

As you said Julie, they’ve been banned here in Ireland for a while now and people just adapted so quickly to not using them. You can buy reusable bags in the supermarket, or bring your a backpack/box to carry stuff. The cute thing is watching young kids who don’t remember that you could get plastic for everything and knowing that they will never get into the habit now. It’s such a small amount of effort to remember you own bags , a lot easier than saving polar bears but just as useful !

I’ve been bringing my own bags to grocery stores for something like 15 years. Finally, it’s starting to be viewed less skeptically. I remember only about 2 years ago, a cashier in Georgia (USA) telling me she didn’t think that was allowed. (Fearing a lost opportunity to advertise, since I wouldn’t be carrying store-branded plastic bags on my way home).
Charging is one way to gradually phase in a change: In response to Chris’s question, the province of Ontario (Canada) passed a law that retailers must charge a minimum of 5 cents per plastic bag. Cashiers in Toronto (the largest city in Ontario) routinely now ask “will you be needing to buy any bags?” before ringing up a total. The newspapers report government statistics that Canadians are apparently too cheap to fork over a whole nickel (5 cents) and so the change of habit has been rapidly taking over. Yay! Or so it is going in the affluent city. On the other hand, when I travelled to or through smaller towns, I found many retailers (the smaller independents I try to support) are still not complying – that is, they are still stuffing your purchases in plastic before you can protest ” But I brought a bag!” and not charging a thing for the plastic either. Perhaps they are afraid either of inconveniencing the seasonal/tourist trade, or maybe of alienating their off-season regulars (who are often, though not always, conservative and resistant to any change of routine especially if it is tagged as big-city-liberal). I hope that will change with time – perhaps down teh road they’ll see their own advertising opportunity and sell reusable bags with the names of their stores, so people can be proud of shopping the independents and will be reminded to return there. I agree with Niamh – why not set the example so our kids won’t remember the overcrowding of our cupboards, our trees and our waterways with plastic bags?